War of the Words

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War of the Words

Ask the public to write more than 750,000 encyclopedia entries, and you're bound to have differences of opinion. Lots of them. It's an everyday occurrence on Wikipedia's site, where any user can change information and anyone else can change it back, resulting in myriad battles over what's correct. Some conflicts are brought on by childish vandalism - defiling George W. Bush's page, for example - and other disputes arise when Wikipedians just don't see eye to eye on subjects ranging from pedophilia to pastry. These arguments can get so heated that admins must step in and resolve matters through arbitration, user blocks, and page lockdowns. So, if you can't make a case for why apple pie isn't American, stick a fork in it.

SCI-FI

Example: Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. Are Ani and Respirator Breath actually two separate characters? When someone decided no and merged the two pages, a Forceful hullabaloo ensued. In time, the Jedi's bio was shortened to just one terse sentence and a link to the Sith Lord himself.

Other contested entries: Should the fiery Balrog in Lord of the Rings have wings? Does the novel/videogame Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire deserve as much prominence as the six films even though it never actually was, you know, a film?

HOT-BUTTON ISSUESExample: Scientology. Even before Tom Cruise's on-air meltdown, this "pseudo-science" - as it has been called on Wikipedia - has long captivated site regulars. Three separate links are dedicated to -archived discussions on topics ranging from whether it's a cult to which celebrities are followers. Long story short: John Travolta still in, Jerry Seinfeld not so much.Other contested entries: Is creationism credible? And (yikes!) are there examples of pedophilia that are legitimate relationships between adult and child?

POP CULTUREExample: Celebrity birthdays. Nothing gets people's blood boiling like whether J.Lo was born in 1969 or 1970. After some vehement back-and-forth, fans dug up the true date from the police report filed after her infamous Manhattan nightclub shooting incident. (Answer: '69.)Other contested entries: Was André the Giant actually 6'10", 7'5", or somewhere in between? Should the entry for Al Gore's new Current TV network be allowed to read like a press release?

TECHNOLOGYExample: Ajax (programming language).In August, one user launched an all-out assault on this entry for asynchronous JavaScript and XML. If that is, indeed, what it is. The term was coined earlier this year by engineer Jesse James Garrett, and what it means (or should mean) is still unsettled. Eventually the assailant was temporarily blocked and stopped contributing.Other contested entries: Is a blog a Web-based application or a static file? And is Web 2.0 old news or a new paradigm? If so, can it be explained in simple English?